Mumbai: Three aircraft have skidded off the runway when landing at Mumbai airport in the last six years, and instead ended up in slushy ground. The city airport has thus handled a fairly diverse portfolio of grounded aircraft, but the latest job involving Turkish Airlines' Airbus 340-300 aircraft can safely be called one of its most trickiest projects ever.
In July 2005, it was Air India's Boeing 747-400, a four-engine behemoth weighing 178,000 kg, length admeasuring 231 feet and a wingspan (distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip) of 211 feet. Thankfully, the jumbo jet only had its nose wheel wedged in slush. In October 2005, came Air Sahara's Boeing 737-800, a twin-engine, medium-haul aircraft with a length of 127 feet and wingspan of 112 feet, weighing about 36,000 kg. It lodged into slush with a damaged nose-wheel and engines partially wedged into the ground. Then came the relatively lighter Kingfisher Airlines ATR 72, a 12,000-kg, 89-feet long turbo-prop aircraft with a wingspan of 88 feet. Its nose-gear, left main gear and left wing were damaged.
But the A340-300, the latest addition to Mumbai airport's infamous list of erring aircraft is from a different league. She is fly-by-wire (the first for Mumbai airport), and her undercarriage assembly (bogie of main wheels), unlike the accommodating Boeing 747 jumbo jet, is too proud to take tighter turns of small radius on ground.
05/09/11 Manju V/Times of India
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